Stable News is Lumx’s weekly curation dedicated to tracking the most important developments in stablecoins, digital infrastructure, and the future of global payments.
This edition marks the close of the year with a different approach from the traditional weekly rhythm. Rather than focusing solely on recent events, the goal is to organize the main signals that 2025 revealed across adoption, regulation, infrastructure, and real value capture, and how this backdrop begins to shape 2026. Fewer isolated announcements, more cycle-level reading.
Reading time: 5 minutes
A look back at Lumx
If 2025 made one thing clear, it was the definitive shift of the stablecoin debate from the conceptual realm to the operational one. Throughout the year, the topic moved beyond exploratory presentations and into decision-making rooms, with increasingly practical questions: how to structure, how to integrate, how to operate within the rules, and how to scale without friction.
At Lumx, this transition was evident. What was once discussed as “potential” became an ongoing agenda of real infrastructure, spanning payments, settlement, treasury, compliance, and integration with legacy systems. Throughout the year, the market was closely followed, both in regulatory discussions and in concrete projects that effectively went live in production.
It also became clear that 2025 was not a year of singular, dramatic turning points, but one of quiet accumulation: institutional progress, greater legal clarity, more sophisticated internal teams, and decisions made with less noise and more discipline. The focus moved away from hype and closer to system engineering.
The recap published this week is born from that perspective. It organizes the main milestones, learnings, and signals that defined the year, not as a list of achievements, but as a map of what has been built and what becomes possible from here. It is a snapshot of an ecosystem that has matured and is beginning to support broader movements in 2026.
Click here to access.
The stablecoin market surpasses US$310 billion and reveals real crypto adoption
The global stablecoin market reached US$310 billion in December 2025, growing by roughly 70% in just one year. More important than the absolute size, this level helps clarify where real crypto usage happens today: in stable assets focused on payments, settlement, and treasury.
USDT and USDC account for approximately 80% of transactional activity, signaling that adoption is more closely tied to trust, liquidity, and network effects than to technological novelty. Stablecoins already function as the “cash layer” of the crypto ecosystem, responsible for the majority of exchange volume and on-chain flows.
Beyond trading, growth is even more evident in remittances, cross-border payments, and inflation protection in emerging markets. Rather than replacing banks, stablecoins occupy spaces where traditional infrastructure is slow, expensive, or inaccessible.
Why this matters:
✅ Stablecoins consolidate as the main driver of real crypto adoption
✅ Transactional usage becomes more relevant than isolated market cap
✅ Traditional infrastructure begins to be bypassed, not directly challenged
Executives project 2026 as the year of invisible infrastructure
Listening to executives across different areas of the ecosystem, a consensus emerges for 2026: stablecoins stop being “crypto products” and start operating as basic infrastructure, increasingly invisible to the end user.
Regulation is expected to act as a catalyst, enabling banks, fintechs, and large platforms to integrate stablecoins directly into their payment, settlement, and treasury systems. In parallel, there is growing consensus that the market will consolidate around a small number of widely accepted issuers.
Not all points are unanimous. Some warn about regulatory fragmentation, risks tied to poorly understood yield products, and the possible rise of tokenized deposits as direct competitors to stablecoins. Still, the prevailing view is a transition from experimentation to scale.
Why this matters:
✅ 2026 is likely to mark the shift toward stablecoins as financial plumbing
✅ Regulation begins to accelerate, rather than restrain, innovation
✅ Consolidation and institutional differentiation gain strategic importance
BlackRock distributes US$100 million in yield via a tokenized fund
BlackRock’s tokenized fund, BUIDL, has surpassed US$100 million in dividends distributed since launch, using US Treasury securities as collateral. Yields are distributed directly on-chain, replicating the core functions of a traditional money market fund on blockchain infrastructure.
More relevant than the absolute volume is the operational aspect: settlement, custody, and distribution functioning at institutional scale with traditional assets. The fund has already exceeded US$2 billion in assets and expanded across multiple blockchains.
This progress reignites the debate around the relationship between stablecoins and tokenized assets. For some, they are competitors; for others, complementary layers of liquidity and collateral.
Why this matters:
✅ Tokenization proves viability with traditional assets and real yield
✅ On-chain infrastructure supports classic financial products
✅ The boundary between crypto and TradFi becomes increasingly operational
Velocity reveals who truly dominated the stablecoin market in 2025
In 2025, velocity metrics, how often a token changes hands, proved more revealing than market cap in understanding the stablecoin market.
USDT led by a wide margin, followed by RLUSD and USDC, indicating strong transactional and institutional usage. Other tokens, such as USD1, grew rapidly, while assets like USDS and USDe served more specialized roles tied to savings, collateral, or yield strategies.
The data reinforces a central distinction: some stablecoins function as circulating money, while others operate as specialized financial instruments.
Why this matters:
✅ Velocity consolidates as a key metric of economic usage
✅ Real value is defined by use, not just supply
✅ Different stablecoins fulfill distinct roles within the system
VCs point to stablecoins and incumbents as the winners of 2025
For venture capital investors, 2025 was the year when value flowed toward clarity of regulation and disciplined execution. Incumbents that waited for the right environment to move, such as Robinhood, and companies tied to stablecoins were cited as major winners.
Stablecoins came to be viewed not just as crypto infrastructure, but as resilient businesses with cash generation, recurring usage, and structural demand. At the same time, the year marked the symbolic closure of problematic past cycles, with models and figures that failed to survive the new regulatory environment.
The VC takeaway is straightforward: when the rules become clearer, capital moves toward those who know how to operate within them.
Why this matters:
✅ Regulatory clarity reshapes winners and losers
✅ Stablecoins emerge as core businesses
✅ Execution outperforms narrative in mature cycles
The backdrop of 2025 delivers a clear message. Stablecoins are no longer a future promise or a niche experiment. They have established themselves as a functional layer of the digital financial system, connecting crypto, banks, platforms, and global markets.
If 2025 was about consolidation and proof of utility, 2026 begins with a new question: who is prepared to operate this infrastructure at scale, efficiently, and within the rules?
See you next year. 💜
